You can get what you want or you can just get old...

Vienna: city of coffee, cobblestones, and crowds of tourists horking down glühwein and buying suitcasefuls of holiday trinkets, nice or chintzy. My mental image of the Christkindlmarkt was one centralized entity, perhaps set in front of a picturesque medieval church or the like. In reality, for the last six weeks or so of the year, the city is all but overrun with little faux-wood stalls, shoehorned into just about every nook and cranny of the downtown area (and, Vienna being an ancient city, nooks and crannies abound). The defining characteristics of a Christmas market are apparently the presence of a mulled-wine vendor and at least one stand selling Traditional Artisan Handicrafts^TM; anything else is gravy (or lebkuchen, or pretzels, or whatever). The upshot of this is that two clusters of stalls, though they may be no more than a block or so apart, are considered two separate markets; the upshot of this is that there were just enough tiny tantalizing differences between markets to compel me to browse through every one that I came across. It is no mean feat to Christmas me out, but Vienna nearly managed it.

I think I've spent more time in planes over the past three weeks than probably the previous three years combined. Between flitting hither and thither, finishing up at Bournemouth, and trying to get Christmas happening at home, I've fallen a bit behind on the blogging. Apologies for that; let's see if we can catch up.

Yes, I am done with the ONP! I was even commended by the instructors on the "detailed work" of that idiotic workbook, which naturally irritated me with its implication that I put more effort in than was strictly necessary. But it's finished now, and the NMC is in possession of that last piece to the puzzle that is my licensure. All that's left now is to pay one more fee (of course), and I will finally be an official, full-fledged registered nurse in the eyes of the United Kingdom. This year has certainly put the relatively simple process of taking the NCLEX in perspective... I also have an appointment to be fingerprinted for my visa, having pinky-sworn that I am not a terrorist, have never been a terrorist, am not intending to become a terrorist, etc. etc. I rather wish I'd been forewarned about the hefty sum I'd have to fork over for the visa processing, but at this point, what am I gonna do? At least it's valid for three years; hopefully I'll be able to stick it out long enough to get my money's worth.

Job-wise, it's looking like I might be interviewing for a position in Oxford to start out. London would have been nice, but I'm not too bothered; the John Radcliffe Hospital is the main teaching hospital for Oxford, so maybe I'll be able to hook myself an up-and-coming English doctor to eventually retire to the countryside with. Mission accomplished!

So much for the boring bits -- coming up, the reasons I've been so often a-wing lately: namely, tripping eastward to Vienna, and westward to good old Cali...

Happy turkey, everyone

It was a good day.

A couple of pictures, and test-driving a new (threadable) comment system. Try it out!

It's Christmastime in the city

In old London town for the week. Bit hard to believe, but I finally shook hands today with the recruiter, Aine, with whom I've been working via phone, email, and post for the past 11 months. I suppose that's a small victory in and of itself - God knows (well, Aine and I know, at least, and a lot of you have a pretty good idea) what it's taken to get me to this point. It was really good to talk to her and glean some more details about what actually living and working over here will be like; somehow I found that it reassured a lot of the doubts that the ONP raised for me. I feel slightly more confident now that I will not forget all my nursing skills and become destitute as a result of this little venture.

Now for more interesting things. Usually I'm a stickler about no Christmas music earlier than 12.01 a.m. on Black Friday, but this year I'm bending my rules and striking up the Josh Groban early in deference to my current location. After all, there's no Thanksgiving to act as a buffer between Halloween and Jingle Bells here, so everything's been thoroughly decked out for a few weeks now. Not that I'm complaining, mind! Although I have to admit that it does add to the flashes of surreality I still occasionally get about being here.

So I had myself a little (10-mile) ramble about town yesterday to drink it all in. Started in Covent Garden:

Two classes down, one more and seven workbook activities to go. Hopefully that'll get done today, as there are some exciting plans in the works...but more on that later.

I have to say, I wish I'd gotten some of the information from this past class, oh, back when I first started this whole process. I knew it was going to involve a pay cut, but I wasn't quite aware of exactly how dramatic that cut was going to be. The tradeoff seems to be that nursing education is hugely subsidized by the government over here, which unfortunately doesn't help me much at this particular point. I just have to keep reminding myself that I'm not here to sock away a boatload of money; the main point (besides snagging Prince Harry, obviously) is having a much more convenient base from which to launch my plans for world domination see more of Europe and, hopefully, beyond.

And on that note, the exciting plans: I think I'm headed to Vienna! I've been so tempted by the idea of a real, proper Christkindlmarkt so (relatively) nearby, and I finally bit the bullet and priced out some flights, which are actually not as bad as I thought they might be. As a bonus, I actually have a friend who lives in the city, so hopefully she'll have some free time and enough German to help me bash my monoglot American way around town for a few days. Very exciting. I don't think apfelstrudel will ship well, but I promise to take plenty of tasty pictures for you all :-D

Remembrance Day

Well well. Here it is, over a week now since I touched down in old Blighty, and I've had this barely-started attempt at a post sitting and mocking me since then. In the spirit of procrastination (though more on that later), let's see if I can actually get something written and stuck up online for all you folks back home.

I think I'm beginning to see how Europeans stay so thin: my perambulations about town today have netted me nearly five miles of walking, yet all I've had were some eggs and toast for breakfast and about half a chicken salad for lunch. Isn't the bracing sea air supposed to whet your appetite, not suppress it?

So my original post began, all cute and optimistic-like. Alas, my appetite is back with a vengeance, not least because -- Bournemouth being a town of multiple personalities -- there is a rather generous assortment of cuisines to choose from here, all of which are more interesting than my original virtuous plan to cook most of my meals in my hostel. Ah well...I am still walking more, at least, so maybe I'll manage to stave off the extra poundage until I get home (and proceed to pack it on over Christmas).

But, yes, Bournemouth. An interesting character mashup of a town. If I've got my history right, it began life as a seaside resort back in the 19th century, and there's still plenty of Victorian flavo(u)r about the place. It continues to be a major tourist destination during the summer, but, this being decidedly not summer, the pier and surrounding beachfront feel a bit seedy, in the way that tourist destinations are prone to in the offseason. Nevertheless, there's still prettiness like this to be had:

And there is something to be said for visiting during the offseason. For one -- it means I'm paying about £65 (i.e. less than $100) per week to stay in the hostel I'm living in. Not too shabby.

And here's the thing about Bournemouth -- it's not just a tourist-town-minus-the-tourists, because it is also home to Bournemouth University, with an enrolment of about 17,000 students. And then, if you follow the main drag to the west end of town, you come to a real commercial centre, such as you'd find in a proper city. So, while I'd hardly call it a bustling metropolis, it's not quite the offseason wasteland I'd expected.

So anyway -- why am I here in the first place?

If you read through that first post of mine, you'll have seen mention of this class I'm required to take to obtain licensure over here. It's called the Overseas Nursing Programme, and I was given to understand that it would be three on-campus days, with a workbook to fill out -- during my spare time, presumably. After all, they promise up front that

We appreciate that you are a registered practitioner in your own country and very probably have a wealth of experience in nursing, and we have tried to respect this when developing the study guide. It is not intended to ‘teach you to nurse’, rather to introduce you to the nursing environment within the UK.

Yes, well. Turns out that little study guide is a whopping 226 pages long, and spends exorbitant amounts of time gnawing on old bones like cultural competence, quality assurance, and evidence-based practice. The irony, of course, is that the way the course is designed -- the reason why I'm over here for a month, when there are only three actual class days -- is due to the fact that the NMC (short for Nursing and Midwifery Council, the national licensing body) wants students to spend all that time "experiencing life in the UK." Because of this workbook, however, I've spent the bulk of my time in my room, in the library, or in various coffee shops in town, writing until my entire arm is in spasm.

Cultural immersion: ur doin it wrong.

Sadly, I've taken about all the time off from that I think I can afford for now, so I'm going to go back and bash away at it for a while longer. Meanwhile, in case you didn't see on Facebook, I've finally given in and set up a Twitter account, as very few of the random observations I have on a day-to-day basis (and think, "this would be great for the blog!") have been making it online. Hopefully this will make it easier for you all to check in/up on me (and make sure I'm still alive, for that matter). Go see!

Sitting in my room, surrounded by piles and an empty duffel bag. I should be attempting to merge the two. Instead, I'm writing this. If you're reading, that probably means you know me, and therefore should not be surprised by the situation.

Would it be trite to say that I can't believe I'm leaving tomorrow? Well, too bad, I'm saying it anyway. You'd think that after 11 months of working to get to this point, I'd be ready -- excited even -- that it's finally almost here. Instead, I feel a little bit dazed, and a lot stressed out.

I think the main problem is this first month and how unstructured it is. I'll be flying in to London, bussing down to Bournemouth, and staying at a hostel for the first week -- so far, so good. But then I have a week with nothing at all planned, followed by another week in Bournemouth, a week in London, and a final few days in Bournemouth before I fly back home for December. Since the course is only three on-campus days, I have a huge amount of downtime, and so many options as to how to spend it that I'm basically paralyzed by indecision. Add to that the consideration of lumping around the aforementioned duffel bag, and the fact that almost anything I do will be an expense, and really, all I want right now is to go back to bed.

Oh well. If I remember correctly, I felt much the same in the days leading up to my move to LA, and I'd say that turned out rather well for me. Here's hoping this will be similar.

So, any brilliant ideas on something interesting/cheap/easily accessible by public transit for that second week in November?

Allons-y!

The inaugural post!

Well, at long last, it's official: nine days from today, I will be on a plane to Heathrow, finally embarking upon this adventure towards which I've been working since January. Since so many wonderful people have asked to be kept updated on my comings and goings (I'm flattered!), I figured that a blog-type outlet would be useful. So that everyone is on the same page, here's the nitty-gritty of what's happening:

What: I'm going to the UK! (duh) I'll be working as a NICU nurse - as it happens, one of the few specialities that is in very short supply over there - via an agency that places foreign RNs throughout the UK. Although it's a London-based company, the setup is essentially the same as US travel nursing, with 13-week assignments and the option to extend or go staff if the arrangement is mutually agreeable to me and the hospital.

Where: Most of the NICU openings, I've been told, are in the south (London, Oxford, etc.), although I could theoretically go anywhere there's a large enough facility to sustain a NICU.

When: THIS month! (And I wasn't sure I was going to be able to say that until about five days ago.) Well, all right, technically speaking I'm flying over this month, but I'm not actually starting anything work-related until November 2 (or 2 November, as I'll have to get used to calling it). There is a mandatory orientation to UK nursing that I'll be taking in November, with three on-campus days at Bournemouth University spread over the course of the month (the 2nd and 17th and the first of December). In between those, I'll be completing other mandatory training, spending a week in London - I've already made plans for Thanksgiving dinner at a pub in the city - and generally exploring. Then it's back home for the holidays, and come January I should be back there to start my first assignment somewhere.

Why: Ah. The million-dollar question. If I'm honest, the best answer I really have is - why not? My Anglophilia isn't a terribly well-kept secret, and I've always been interested in the idea of travel nursing. Combine those in one fortuitous Google search that connected me to the agency I've been talking to, and you have this ambitious, possibly harebrained, plan of mine.

Also, they speak English over there. Or so they claim.

So that's that, in a nutshell. I promise - okay, I hope - to keep this blog updated better than my last one (if that one is to be believed, my road trip to LA ended somewhere in Wisconsin, I think). I'd love to hear from anyone who's reading along out there: comments, questions, complaints about the blog format, anything. Please do feel free to pass along the link, too, especially to anyone who's not on Facebook. And if you happen to find yourself headed to England anytime after next January, let me know!